Las Vegas, NV Ð Playing for the first time on the floor of the nation's biggest computer trade show, NeXT fought to rise above the noise level at Comdex Fall 1993. Featuring NEXTSTEP 3.2, the Portable Distributed Object (PDO) system, and a range of third-party tools, the company made its case for object-oriented development among a sea of 2300 exhibitors, most focused on the mainstream personal-computer market.
"We're here to raise the flag for NeXT and to keep in front of the computer press," said Lauren Flanagen-Sellers, president of GS Corporation and one of eight third parties who participated in the booth. She added that traffic through the exhibit was heavy, ranging from existing NeXT customers to serious prospects to tire kickers.
Beyond the NeXT booth, NEXTSTEP was displayed on Intel systems in the exhibits for Dell, Epson, DEC, Data General, S3, and JCIS.
The unifying theme of the NeXT booth was extensibility, starting with a revised demonstration of PDO, which was used in a Black-Sholes pricing analysis. Many of the third parties showed applications that include object palettes and other links into customer-developed systems.
Exhibiting with NeXT were RDR, Athena Design, Lighthouse Design, GS Corporation, Pages Software, Blue Rose Systems, and Logibec/PSI. "It isn't just the usual suspects," said David Spitzler, a NeXT developer advocate. "It shows the vitality of the NEXTSTEP market."
By helping to defray the cost of the booth, the third parties contributed to a broader presence than NeXT would have attempted on its own. In past years, NeXT has come to Comdex with private suites or receptions, but has not ventured onto the show floor.
Among PC manufacturers displaying NEXTSTEP, most grouped it with specialty environments for their most advanced hardware designs. Dell, for example, featured NEXTSTEP as one of four advanced systems along with Microsoft's Windows NT, SunSoft's Solaris, and IBM's OS/2.
According to Tom Hartsell, Dell's manager of advanced systems business solutions software, Dell's hardware support for NEXTSTEP will expand to four designs with base prices ranging from $2000 to $5000. "Dell intends to be a major player in the NeXT market. That's significant, because most of the major PC vendors in this building aren't even giving it a chance," he said.
By putting NEXTSTEP on equal footing with these other 32-bit operating systems, Dell is providing "a level playing field," Hartsell said. "One of these four systems is going to be the winner."